Wit is a lean creature with sharp inquiring nose, whereas humor has a kindly eye and a comfortable girth. Wit, if it be necessary,... uses malice to score a point--like a cat it is quick to jump--but humor keeps the peace in an easy chair. Wit has a better voice in a solo, but humor comes into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning, whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season's fashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, but humor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, but humor in homely-spun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas humor goes off whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharper company at the table, but humor serves better in mischance and in the rain. When it tumbles wit is sour, but humor goes uncomplaining without its dinner. Humor laughs at another's jest and holds its sides, while wit sits wrapped in study for a lively answer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

--The man who has stood on the Acropolis,And looked down over Attica; or he...Who has sailed where picturesque Constantinople is,Or seen Timbuctoo, or hath taken teaIn small-eyed China's crockery-ware metropolis,Or sat amidst the bricks of Nineveh,May not think much of London's first appearance--But ask him what he thinks of it a year hence!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Alas! ye lordes, many a false flattererIs in your courts, and many a losenger,...That pleasen you well more, by my faith,Than he that soothfastness unto you saith.Readeth Ecclesiasticus of flattery;Beeth ware, ye lordes of her treachery.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I heartily wish you, in the plain home-spun style, a great number of happy new years, well employed in forming both your mind and ...your manners, to be useful and agreeable to yourself, your country, and your friends.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »